The last time The Barn Door received a full newspaper review the first George Bush was president, Boyz II Men had the No. 1 song of the year and “Aladdin” crushed “Home Alone 2” as the top-grossing movie in the country.

Since its 1992 review in the San Antonio Light, the restaurant received a mini-review in 1999 and was featured in Chefs’ Secrets columns over the years but has had no real review since current owner Randy Stokes purchased the business in 2011.

Not that the lack of attention has mattered. The restaurant’s 410 seats fill up quickly for lunch and dinner six days a week.

But do diners keep coming back because they and their parents and grandparents have been coming here since 1953 and it’s a family tradition? Or is this place worth going to on its own merits?

Based on my memory from visits nearly a decade ago, I would have said the appeal centered less around the food and more on its Western atmosphere, red and white checkered tablecloths and decades of memorabilia hanging on the walls — from old Texas license plates to autographed pictures of former Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry.

But after a couple of recent visits, everything seemed better than I remembered. Whatever a diner’s reason for paying a visit, the Barn Door offers a solid experience with good dishes — some of them excellent — unobtrusive service and a genuine sense of Texas that comes from more than 60 years in business.

If there’s a showstopper on this menu, it may be the terrific macaroni and cheese. Either I didn’t try it during visits many years ago, or it has improved over the years. The thick and gooey mixture of elbow macaroni, bechamel and cheddar, topped with crisp bread crumbs, was a straightforward version of the childhood classic, done right.

If the mac and cheese is glorious, then the Barn Door Burger is sublime. It’s a simple burger of coarsely ground sirloin on a housemade bun, with green leaf lettuce, thick tomato slices, some rings of white onion and a pickle spear. At $17.50, it’s pricey, but this level of quality is worth it.

That same straightforward approach made the shrimp cocktail worth ordering. An order of five tender boiled shrimp hung on the side of a cocktail glass, with the thickest part of the body sitting in a pool of cocktail sauce with a spoonful of grated horseradish on one side of the sauce. It’s what’s expected of a good shrimp cocktail.

But sometimes a simple approach can be a bit too simple. A side of sauteed mushrooms, cooked in butter and red wine, just seemed a bit blah.

Thinking of ordering light and grabbing a steak salad? Make room for a huge platter piled with iceberg and green leaf lettuce, tomato slices and slices of red onions, topped with cubes of grilled steak, cooked to a nice medium rare.

This restaurant has been known for its salad dressings for decades, and they were every bit as good as I remembered, especially the herbaceous ranch, rich with buttermilk tang and the thick, rich and delightfully pungent garlic dressing. The rolls have been a longtime favorite, and they’re still very good, both during dinner and reheated the next morning with a little jam.

The Barn Door also has a following for its chicken-fried rib-eye in a cream gravy, and the well-seasoned beef and nicely flavorful batter made it easy to see why.

The grilled shrimp, for those who don’t want to have steak, is fine, too. The shrimp has some of the smoke flavor, and it goes nicely with the accompanying drawn butter for dipping.

But the real reason people keep coming here is the house-aged and cut steaks, cooked over a mesquite and charcoal fire. The smoke flavor and char along the edges of the meat conveyed a rustic flavor that reminded me of a weekend on a ranch outside McAllen when I ate way too much beef cooked by ranch hands. (They even called me “hueco” or hollow, because of how much beef I put away.) Even the beef chunks atop the salad had an impressive char on the exterior with nice red interior. And a rib-eye from Texas cattle was cooked just right. The Texas steak was choice, with less marbling than prime, but it’s still a nice steak.

Now is this the best steak house in town? No, but it’s a good one that will call me back for a steak or maybe that burger. And with a wine selection that offers bottles ranging from a $25 prosecco to a $175 Bordeaux, there are plenty of choices to accompany a meal here. Or take advantage of the full bar. Try the house margarita, made with Barn Door tequila. Yes, the restaurant has its own branded tequila, as well as gin and bourbon.

The pecan pie is legendary here, but the crust was too soft for my taste. The moist chocolate cake turned out better. Still, the desserts, like the dressings, sauces, rolls and nearly everything, are all made in house.

In a time when restaurants, businesses and even families offer little continuity, there’s something comforting about a place that offers such consistency and even improves a bit over the years. Years from now, when my now 7-year-old son comes home from college, I can see us welcoming him back with a good steak at The Barn Door.

Edmund Tijerina writes about food and reviews restaurants for the San Antonio Express-News. His culinary explorations began with rolling flour tortillas as a child and included a yearlong stint as chef and owner of a restaurant in Milwaukee. He is a frequent contributor to Eater.com and has written about food, restaurants and reviewing for Epicurious and Romenesko. He joined the Express-News in 1999 after closing his restaurant. Before joining the Taste team, he wrote the ""Around the Town"" column for the Express-News form 2002-2008. His other assignments for the paper included education and news obituaries. He began his newspaper career in Bay City, Texas, before going to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, graduate school in New York, a yearlong internship at the Chicago Tribune and different positions at the Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He's a Houston native with philosophy degree from Harvard and a master's from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. He lives with and cooks for his wife and son in San Antonio.